If you were to poll people who once worked in bulk goods packaging you might find that they are working even more hours at their minimum wage jobs because they lost their jobs on the assembly line that barely kept their families fed. Since 2002 something like 85% of jobs in the bulk packaging world have gone. This, with a huge increase in bulk packaging output.
In my city, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, the transit system is terrible, as in you had might as well walk from many points as it will be more reliable.
Reliable is the operative word. For many people transit is not financially an option because they have to be at work on time at a certain time. Our transit system is woeful when it comes to that. Thus even if you have a minimum wage job it is a financially good idea to buy a hunk of crap car as it has a far better chance of getting you to work every day on time.
Also the vast majority of our bus system is designed to get city staff to their HQ from the suburbs where, demographically, city staff typically live. But if you work in one of the industrial parks then you are S. out of luck. And complete suffering upon those who live near one industrial park and work in another. They literally might be 2-3 hours using a transit system that would be a 30 minute drive.
So for me they could even pay me a small fee every time I used the transit system and it still wouldn't be of value.
I really really really really hate Oracle. I have used and hate MongoDB way worse. They have created this tool that on the surface gives the developer unlimited freedom; as long as they do things the MongoDB way. I hope that all the MongoDB people realize just how crappy and destructive a product they have created and entirely quit the technology world and go back to be being snobby baristas at some third rate coffee shop.
Nearly every OS database has support options from either the very people who built them or other excellent companies. Plus if you run into a "support" issue you have probably run into a bug. Oracle isn't going to patch a bug for some chain of corner stores. They are also not going to hire "best of breed" developers who can fix things. They are going to have IT people who probably hate their jobs.
I ask the question why does anyone use oracle in this day and age? I am not asking for a whitepaper or some PR generated sales points but a real answer from real technical people who have a broad experience with multiple databases. I think that it is mighty telling that none of the mega data companies use Oracle; the facebooks, the googles, the reddits, the slashdots. Basically if their data needs are met by the likes of MySQL, redis, postgres, etc then what company or organization can claim that they need something more "Enterprise class"?
The companies that I have seen using Oracle often could literally have used access for their data needs and had been wildly overserved by having an Oracle database. Something like my personal favourite MariaDB running on a single halfway decent computer could easily handle the needs of a fair sized power company. Put that on a nice cluster of fairly run of the mill servers and it would be solid as a rock.
I have no idea what koolaid the Oracle salespeople are serving up but I would love if someone wrote a guidebook on how to sell like that as at least people might figure out a way to resist.
So I can't see any customer of any size from the very smallest to the very largest needing Oracle. It strikes me as a variation of the old saying, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Sun followed in those footsteps in the 90s but things like Linux put paid to Sun's dominance. Why haven't the excellent OpenSource databases put paid to Oracle?
I can be 100% sure that he is dead. Otherwise he would have come back and beat Ivy to death, not out of uncontrolled anger, but to prove a point that it is an oversized clunky pile of crap.
HR Departments love them like HR Pam loves cocaine.This is because, quite simply, many HR departments think that teaching yourself a language would be like teaching yourself to be a doctor. It is inconceivable that an intelligent person could actually end up being able to perform, on their own, as well as some guy who has a certification from the IT collage run out of the nearby failed mall.
This is generally the opposite of what most CS people know which is that the majority of drones popping out of the local IT mall "collage" are strangely incompetent.
But even worse I know people who have become certified in one of the major programming languages (I won't say which one because the people who use that language will not tolerate criticism) and the techniques that you had to use to pass were terrible.
But if you are trying to impress the HR drones in some mega-corp a certification will be just the thing. I am not joking when I say that if a guy named Mr. Stroustrup applied to work at my local power company that he would be better off if he had a totally bogus certification for C++, instead of the "self-proclaimed" title of "inventor of C++"
I think your quote "the worst software on the planet" is missing some swearing and hookers.
As for the assigned parking spaces then the McAfee execs have two steps ahead of them. First get an assigned parking space policy, then they will be able to screw people out of their parking spaces.
I visited a company once where there was a long wide hallway that ran from one end of the main building to the other and a rabbit's warren of hallways that ran parallel. A few execs had card reading door locks installed on either end of the hallway and on every door that entered into the hallway so that only they could use it. I am talking about 12 people out of around 900. When some auditors(from a potential suitor) asked them about this they said that they often had meetings while they walked and needed the private space.
Prior to their little hallway coup there might have been a dozen people walking in that hall at any given time and it was actually packed during peak times such as lunch. After the lockout the other hallways were near mad max combat zones.
I was so sad when that company didn't manage to IPO as I knew their days were numbered. But their IPO efforts failed and the company slowly shrunk over the years. They still exist but maybe have 200 people working there.
The key being that these people were also scum of the earth and had all kinds of interesting techniques for making sales. One was that they were the exclusive regional salespeople of office gear for a couple of companies. The stuff had all these special connections and whatnot that were incompatible with everything else on the market. Their pricing was (making up the exact numbers) $1000 for your first unit, but $5,000 for your 500th unit. This way they would bid on government contracts and win the small ones. Then because of their exclusive product lines they would get "sole sourced" contracts from the government for all further office gear. This would completely end run the bidding process and for a long time they made boatloads of cash. Then the newspapers got wind of it and the whole thing came crashing down with all kinds of new rules about proprietary solutions not being preferred. But within the contracts themselves they had all kinds of little scumbag tricks. One was to outfit the office of the decision makers with a pile of crazy nice stuff but only for a "trial" run of a year or so. Keeping the "trial" going would be completely dependent upon further contracts which they had experts who would help the bureaucrat to "streamline" the entire purchase. i.e. Sole sourced.
I very much doubt that the McAfee people were any different and letting people like that into your building is begging for disaster. I suspect the terrible software was just a symptom of a completely degenerate company.
Anyone with enough technological know-how to reboot a computer knows that McAfee is one of the worst things you can do to a computer. So even if Intel fully intended to throw out that bloated sack of excrement and recode it from scratch the reputation it has earned pretty well makes its brand worth negative money. If anything it would make intel look worse.
The only thing that made McAfee software was an evil business model. Thus Intel had two choices. maintain the evil business model to retain any monetary value from their purchase, or to abandon the model and forego any profits/revenues that McAfee would bring in.
To me the only value that I would see in McAfee would be to do a historical analysis to figure out how they became so broken so as to be able to form a checklist that Intel could use going forward to make sure that they never follow the same path.
My fear for Intel is that some psychopathic executives have made the jump from McAfee to Intel and are like ebola being released into a kindergarten. They will flourish and spread while leaving Intel a twitching bleeding from every orifice corpse. I could see Intel executives thinking themselves cunning where they do a huge deal so as to get closer the next promotion whereas a McAfee executive would falsify data to shut down an entire department so that he gets a slightly better parking space.
Basically if the company hires this guy then they die. I am not saying that they don't do well but that they die a horrible death. If the did a proper check and asked people like me I would say something like, "Are you serious, do you want any staff that work with him to get angry and leave? Do you hate your customers because he will piss them off and they too will leave. As for his product all I can say is that it will be way over documented. Not well built but way way way over documented. So a few upper managers will be happy with the project right up until they realize that he has turned it into complete crap.
Then when they look at the project they will realize that the three stooges would have run it better by accident.
The horrible thing with this guy is that people drink his koolaid until it is way too late. Then they realize that on a simple and not mission critical project that it might not have been a good idea to have a 7 to 1 ratio of QA people to developers.
My neighbour is in possession to the password to his online bank and he is very rich. I would like a new Lamborghini so I am going to spy on his computer until he types his password.
My other neighbour is very sexy and probably showers naked. So I will just put a little camera in to gather some "research" information.
Just because they want information and someone else has it in no way justifies what they do.
I think we can all agree that you can spy on an enemy. But when a country spies on its own people they don't even need to worry about foreign enemies. They have a built in one at home.
I wonder how hard they pursue people who write comments that make them feel bad?
I wouldn't be surprised if some of these asshats have serious anger management issues where they put people who cut them off in traffic onto "extra scrutiny" lists for when they travel. It certainly appears that there is no repercussions to anything they do so why not?
I read an article years ago about a guy who developed the software that made transacting CDOs (Collateralized debt obligations) much easier. Basically that lead to the entire sub-prime mortgage industry which lead to 2008. So I think that he wins this whole discussion.
It is very simple as to why they did this. Amnesty was pestering some bad people. These bad people were doing a deal with the UK government that would come under the umbrella of "realpolitik" in order to smooth this deal the home office was asked to help out with some information that would interfere with Amnesty's work. All the little spy drones would say things like "These orders came from the highest level"
So if you were to ask almost everyone at almost every level if this was a good or a bad thing that they have done they would pretty much all agree that it was in the greater interest of the UK. Thus they did bad things to us for our own good.
What they never seem to ask themselves is what the average person in the UK would think about dealing with these very bad people. Most people would quickly say things like the ends not justifying the means.
If you look at the former prime minister TB and his dealing with Libya's madman leader then you know that these people will pursue their own interests, their career interests, and the interests of their friends and supporters long before they would even give a shrug about the interests of the citizenry.
Also when it comes to these people, I don't see the whole "a few bad apples." because if they know that this is going on and do nothing then they are just as bad as the rest. It is no different than if I know my neighbour is murdering people and I just buy earplugs to not hear the screaming. I might not be guilty of murder but it doesn't make me a good apple.
I was quite pleased with the level. I actually expected either something very pedantic or something so easy that I would have a little weep.
If anything the main problem that I have is that I have met CS grads who might not do so well on that exam. I am not saying it is too hard but that the aforementioned CS grads sucked.
For some reason I have always had two problems with IPv6. One is that it offers me as an end user exactly nothing terribly tangible. Yes yes I know of the whole running out of addresses stuff but I have never contacted a server host who said, "Sorry we are out of addresses." My ISP has never said, "Sorry no more customers we are out of addresses." So why should the average user even give a crap.
The other thing that I have found is that without exception those who I have met who are pushing IPv6 remind me nearly perfectly (and in many cases were) the same Y2K people who told us that the world was going to end. They are grade A assholes. Thus it instantly makes me suspect that IPv6 has hidden surprises buried in it that will piss me off. So paternalistic shit that is "good for me" but in reality somehow allows some asshole admin to fuck up my traffic because his traffic has a higher priority or some such bullshit.
So my prediction is that when all is said and done there will never be IPv6 but someone is going to come up with IPG2 (Generation 2) that is chock a block full of things that we all want. Things where we will be happy to demand that our ISPs make the leap, things that get us out there to buy new networking gear.
IPv6 will basically become XHTML. Some will argue that this is impossible but WEP was pretty much tossed into the trash and everyone was onboard with the new things like WPA in a heartbeat. Not because it satiated the black heart of some pedantic network admin but because it was actually better.
Seeing that when I was young and my computer (VIC-20) was crappy, I hand wrote assembly on paper and then inputted it. So in the case where they are looking for Java solutions, give them handwritten bytecode.
Just finished 10 questions from a sample test: http://manatee.cc.gt.atl.ga.us/apExam/ and I would rate it as FizzBuzz*2. FizzBuzz would be in the lower half of difficulty.
If anything I was a bit slow taking it as I was looking for trick questions that weren't there. But I would say that someone who could pass that test would have at least the basic tools to go fourth and program.
Plus it is in Java which I haven't touched since 2000.
But once I looked it up the solution was completely obvious. The wikipedia entry suggests a linked list, while I was also thinking associative array.
Now my curiosity is demanding a sample copy of the test that I can take. Beyond not having memorized many of the terms I wonder how I would do after 20+ years of programming.
With these sort of tests I often worry that it is just Bulimia Learning where you have to memorize esoterica while never learning to actually program. For instance for you C++ wizzards out there can you answer this one: "What is the compl keyword for? And why is is needed?" Surely as an accomplished C++ programmer you know all the keywords, there aren't that many. (I had to look it up).
But if I look at a sample exam and find out it is all FizzBuzz then I will have a little weep for the children.
I didn't say that she was a republican, more that she is dresses like a little miss perfect young republican. I don't really see much difference between the two parties as I judge them by their actions not their words.
I find that democrats don't actually dress much differently but that republicans are a bit more consistent.
I have met many Oracle salespeople and she fits the mould perfectly. Young republican hair and clothing style. Uptight. Sleazy. Looks like she either uses you or ignores you if you aren't getting her a sale. And has that I arrived at 6am for work and thus am superior to you regardless of your actual contribution.
She recently had a kid and I am willing to bet that the kid is being raised by nannies.
Thus what kind of crap would she give about customers? Customers exist to be exploited for a better year end bonus. Great products are for the weak.
When people ask me to help them get java working I say no bloody way. My simple theory is that Java in the enterprise might be a good thing but java on the home machine is just asking for trouble. To me Java has a perfect storm of people not wanting it. First is that Java must be regularly updated to keep it safe. But I don't trust these updates to not screw me over in some fashion, either through malware such as this or simply popping up at an inconvenient time. For instance I am often recording video tutorials. There is nothing worse than some software update popup showing up in the middle. Especially if it is one of these focus grabbing popups. But the java update is a total bastard as it keeps turning itself back on after I keep turning it off.
So I basically danced around my office when I read that chrome and firefox were pretty much killing Java as an extension/addon.
But adding malware to their install just makes me laugh at how stupid these MBAs are. Yes in the next few quarters they will make lots of money. But how many quarters before people will have significantly reduced their downloads?
Also for Yahoo, I hate Ask.com for their trashy approach to getting users. Make a great product and then people might come. Fooling them into coming is just scummy. So now people will lump Yahoo in with the various sites that over the years have tried to use deception as their marketing tool.
For those of you out there all touchy about Java, my comments are not about the Java language, but the java product.
Quite simply my Whois data has only been abused. I have received phony bills from fictitious domain registries. I have received threatening letters from companies that I was violating this or that. And then there is the endless spam. Except that this spam carefully exploits the data found in my whois data.
On the other-hand I don't know of anyone who benefited from whois data beyond curiosity.
Slashdot Mirror
If you were to poll people who once worked in bulk goods packaging you might find that they are working even more hours at their minimum wage jobs because they lost their jobs on the assembly line that barely kept their families fed. Since 2002 something like 85% of jobs in the bulk packaging world have gone. This, with a huge increase in bulk packaging output.
In my city, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, the transit system is terrible, as in you had might as well walk from many points as it will be more reliable.
Reliable is the operative word. For many people transit is not financially an option because they have to be at work on time at a certain time. Our transit system is woeful when it comes to that. Thus even if you have a minimum wage job it is a financially good idea to buy a hunk of crap car as it has a far better chance of getting you to work every day on time.
Also the vast majority of our bus system is designed to get city staff to their HQ from the suburbs where, demographically, city staff typically live. But if you work in one of the industrial parks then you are S. out of luck. And complete suffering upon those who live near one industrial park and work in another. They literally might be 2-3 hours using a transit system that would be a 30 minute drive.
So for me they could even pay me a small fee every time I used the transit system and it still wouldn't be of value.
I really really really really hate Oracle. I have used and hate MongoDB way worse. They have created this tool that on the surface gives the developer unlimited freedom; as long as they do things the MongoDB way. I hope that all the MongoDB people realize just how crappy and destructive a product they have created and entirely quit the technology world and go back to be being snobby baristas at some third rate coffee shop.
Nearly every OS database has support options from either the very people who built them or other excellent companies. Plus if you run into a "support" issue you have probably run into a bug. Oracle isn't going to patch a bug for some chain of corner stores. They are also not going to hire "best of breed" developers who can fix things. They are going to have IT people who probably hate their jobs.
I ask the question why does anyone use oracle in this day and age? I am not asking for a whitepaper or some PR generated sales points but a real answer from real technical people who have a broad experience with multiple databases. I think that it is mighty telling that none of the mega data companies use Oracle; the facebooks, the googles, the reddits, the slashdots. Basically if their data needs are met by the likes of MySQL, redis, postgres, etc then what company or organization can claim that they need something more "Enterprise class"?
The companies that I have seen using Oracle often could literally have used access for their data needs and had been wildly overserved by having an Oracle database. Something like my personal favourite MariaDB running on a single halfway decent computer could easily handle the needs of a fair sized power company. Put that on a nice cluster of fairly run of the mill servers and it would be solid as a rock.
I have no idea what koolaid the Oracle salespeople are serving up but I would love if someone wrote a guidebook on how to sell like that as at least people might figure out a way to resist.
So I can't see any customer of any size from the very smallest to the very largest needing Oracle. It strikes me as a variation of the old saying, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Sun followed in those footsteps in the 90s but things like Linux put paid to Sun's dominance. Why haven't the excellent OpenSource databases put paid to Oracle?
I can be 100% sure that he is dead. Otherwise he would have come back and beat Ivy to death, not out of uncontrolled anger, but to prove a point that it is an oversized clunky pile of crap.
HR Departments love them like HR Pam loves cocaine.This is because, quite simply, many HR departments think that teaching yourself a language would be like teaching yourself to be a doctor. It is inconceivable that an intelligent person could actually end up being able to perform, on their own, as well as some guy who has a certification from the IT collage run out of the nearby failed mall.
This is generally the opposite of what most CS people know which is that the majority of drones popping out of the local IT mall "collage" are strangely incompetent.
But even worse I know people who have become certified in one of the major programming languages (I won't say which one because the people who use that language will not tolerate criticism) and the techniques that you had to use to pass were terrible.
But if you are trying to impress the HR drones in some mega-corp a certification will be just the thing. I am not joking when I say that if a guy named Mr. Stroustrup applied to work at my local power company that he would be better off if he had a totally bogus certification for C++, instead of the "self-proclaimed" title of "inventor of C++"
I think your quote "the worst software on the planet" is missing some swearing and hookers.
As for the assigned parking spaces then the McAfee execs have two steps ahead of them. First get an assigned parking space policy, then they will be able to screw people out of their parking spaces.
I visited a company once where there was a long wide hallway that ran from one end of the main building to the other and a rabbit's warren of hallways that ran parallel. A few execs had card reading door locks installed on either end of the hallway and on every door that entered into the hallway so that only they could use it. I am talking about 12 people out of around 900. When some auditors(from a potential suitor) asked them about this they said that they often had meetings while they walked and needed the private space.
Prior to their little hallway coup there might have been a dozen people walking in that hall at any given time and it was actually packed during peak times such as lunch. After the lockout the other hallways were near mad max combat zones.
I was so sad when that company didn't manage to IPO as I knew their days were numbered. But their IPO efforts failed and the company slowly shrunk over the years. They still exist but maybe have 200 people working there.
The key being that these people were also scum of the earth and had all kinds of interesting techniques for making sales. One was that they were the exclusive regional salespeople of office gear for a couple of companies. The stuff had all these special connections and whatnot that were incompatible with everything else on the market. Their pricing was (making up the exact numbers) $1000 for your first unit, but $5,000 for your 500th unit. This way they would bid on government contracts and win the small ones. Then because of their exclusive product lines they would get "sole sourced" contracts from the government for all further office gear. This would completely end run the bidding process and for a long time they made boatloads of cash. Then the newspapers got wind of it and the whole thing came crashing down with all kinds of new rules about proprietary solutions not being preferred. But within the contracts themselves they had all kinds of little scumbag tricks. One was to outfit the office of the decision makers with a pile of crazy nice stuff but only for a "trial" run of a year or so. Keeping the "trial" going would be completely dependent upon further contracts which they had experts who would help the bureaucrat to "streamline" the entire purchase. i.e. Sole sourced.
I very much doubt that the McAfee people were any different and letting people like that into your building is begging for disaster. I suspect the terrible software was just a symptom of a completely degenerate company.
Anyone with enough technological know-how to reboot a computer knows that McAfee is one of the worst things you can do to a computer. So even if Intel fully intended to throw out that bloated sack of excrement and recode it from scratch the reputation it has earned pretty well makes its brand worth negative money. If anything it would make intel look worse.
The only thing that made McAfee software was an evil business model. Thus Intel had two choices. maintain the evil business model to retain any monetary value from their purchase, or to abandon the model and forego any profits/revenues that McAfee would bring in.
To me the only value that I would see in McAfee would be to do a historical analysis to figure out how they became so broken so as to be able to form a checklist that Intel could use going forward to make sure that they never follow the same path.
My fear for Intel is that some psychopathic executives have made the jump from McAfee to Intel and are like ebola being released into a kindergarten. They will flourish and spread while leaving Intel a twitching bleeding from every orifice corpse. I could see Intel executives thinking themselves cunning where they do a huge deal so as to get closer the next promotion whereas a McAfee executive would falsify data to shut down an entire department so that he gets a slightly better parking space.
Basically if the company hires this guy then they die. I am not saying that they don't do well but that they die a horrible death. If the did a proper check and asked people like me I would say something like, "Are you serious, do you want any staff that work with him to get angry and leave? Do you hate your customers because he will piss them off and they too will leave. As for his product all I can say is that it will be way over documented. Not well built but way way way over documented. So a few upper managers will be happy with the project right up until they realize that he has turned it into complete crap.
Then when they look at the project they will realize that the three stooges would have run it better by accident.
The horrible thing with this guy is that people drink his koolaid until it is way too late. Then they realize that on a simple and not mission critical project that it might not have been a good idea to have a 7 to 1 ratio of QA people to developers.
My neighbour is in possession to the password to his online bank and he is very rich. I would like a new Lamborghini so I am going to spy on his computer until he types his password.
My other neighbour is very sexy and probably showers naked. So I will just put a little camera in to gather some "research" information.
Just because they want information and someone else has it in no way justifies what they do.
I think we can all agree that you can spy on an enemy. But when a country spies on its own people they don't even need to worry about foreign enemies. They have a built in one at home.
I wonder how hard they pursue people who write comments that make them feel bad?
I wouldn't be surprised if some of these asshats have serious anger management issues where they put people who cut them off in traffic onto "extra scrutiny" lists for when they travel. It certainly appears that there is no repercussions to anything they do so why not?
I read an article years ago about a guy who developed the software that made transacting CDOs (Collateralized debt obligations) much easier. Basically that lead to the entire sub-prime mortgage industry which lead to 2008. So I think that he wins this whole discussion.
It is very simple as to why they did this. Amnesty was pestering some bad people. These bad people were doing a deal with the UK government that would come under the umbrella of "realpolitik" in order to smooth this deal the home office was asked to help out with some information that would interfere with Amnesty's work. All the little spy drones would say things like "These orders came from the highest level"
So if you were to ask almost everyone at almost every level if this was a good or a bad thing that they have done they would pretty much all agree that it was in the greater interest of the UK. Thus they did bad things to us for our own good.
What they never seem to ask themselves is what the average person in the UK would think about dealing with these very bad people. Most people would quickly say things like the ends not justifying the means.
If you look at the former prime minister TB and his dealing with Libya's madman leader then you know that these people will pursue their own interests, their career interests, and the interests of their friends and supporters long before they would even give a shrug about the interests of the citizenry.
Also when it comes to these people, I don't see the whole "a few bad apples." because if they know that this is going on and do nothing then they are just as bad as the rest. It is no different than if I know my neighbour is murdering people and I just buy earplugs to not hear the screaming. I might not be guilty of murder but it doesn't make me a good apple.
I was quite pleased with the level. I actually expected either something very pedantic or something so easy that I would have a little weep.
If anything the main problem that I have is that I have met CS grads who might not do so well on that exam. I am not saying it is too hard but that the aforementioned CS grads sucked.
For some reason I have always had two problems with IPv6. One is that it offers me as an end user exactly nothing terribly tangible. Yes yes I know of the whole running out of addresses stuff but I have never contacted a server host who said, "Sorry we are out of addresses." My ISP has never said, "Sorry no more customers we are out of addresses." So why should the average user even give a crap.
The other thing that I have found is that without exception those who I have met who are pushing IPv6 remind me nearly perfectly (and in many cases were) the same Y2K people who told us that the world was going to end. They are grade A assholes. Thus it instantly makes me suspect that IPv6 has hidden surprises buried in it that will piss me off. So paternalistic shit that is "good for me" but in reality somehow allows some asshole admin to fuck up my traffic because his traffic has a higher priority or some such bullshit.
So my prediction is that when all is said and done there will never be IPv6 but someone is going to come up with IPG2 (Generation 2) that is chock a block full of things that we all want. Things where we will be happy to demand that our ISPs make the leap, things that get us out there to buy new networking gear.
IPv6 will basically become XHTML. Some will argue that this is impossible but WEP was pretty much tossed into the trash and everyone was onboard with the new things like WPA in a heartbeat. Not because it satiated the black heart of some pedantic network admin but because it was actually better.
Seeing that when I was young and my computer (VIC-20) was crappy, I hand wrote assembly on paper and then inputted it. So in the case where they are looking for Java solutions, give them handwritten bytecode.
Just finished 10 questions from a sample test: http://manatee.cc.gt.atl.ga.us/apExam/ and I would rate it as FizzBuzz*2. FizzBuzz would be in the lower half of difficulty.
If anything I was a bit slow taking it as I was looking for trick questions that weren't there. But I would say that someone who could pass that test would have at least the basic tools to go fourth and program.
Plus it is in Java which I haven't touched since 2000.
But once I looked it up the solution was completely obvious. The wikipedia entry suggests a linked list, while I was also thinking associative array.
Now my curiosity is demanding a sample copy of the test that I can take. Beyond not having memorized many of the terms I wonder how I would do after 20+ years of programming.
With these sort of tests I often worry that it is just Bulimia Learning where you have to memorize esoterica while never learning to actually program. For instance for you C++ wizzards out there can you answer this one: "What is the compl keyword for? And why is is needed?" Surely as an accomplished C++ programmer you know all the keywords, there aren't that many. (I had to look it up).
But if I look at a sample exam and find out it is all FizzBuzz then I will have a little weep for the children.
I didn't say that she was a republican, more that she is dresses like a little miss perfect young republican. I don't really see much difference between the two parties as I judge them by their actions not their words.
I find that democrats don't actually dress much differently but that republicans are a bit more consistent.
I might argue with you had I visited Yahoo in the last decade.
I have met many Oracle salespeople and she fits the mould perfectly. Young republican hair and clothing style. Uptight. Sleazy. Looks like she either uses you or ignores you if you aren't getting her a sale. And has that I arrived at 6am for work and thus am superior to you regardless of your actual contribution.
She recently had a kid and I am willing to bet that the kid is being raised by nannies.
Thus what kind of crap would she give about customers? Customers exist to be exploited for a better year end bonus. Great products are for the weak.
I hope that within the decade that your statement goes from funny to insightful.
When people ask me to help them get java working I say no bloody way. My simple theory is that Java in the enterprise might be a good thing but java on the home machine is just asking for trouble. To me Java has a perfect storm of people not wanting it. First is that Java must be regularly updated to keep it safe. But I don't trust these updates to not screw me over in some fashion, either through malware such as this or simply popping up at an inconvenient time. For instance I am often recording video tutorials. There is nothing worse than some software update popup showing up in the middle. Especially if it is one of these focus grabbing popups. But the java update is a total bastard as it keeps turning itself back on after I keep turning it off.
So I basically danced around my office when I read that chrome and firefox were pretty much killing Java as an extension/addon.
But adding malware to their install just makes me laugh at how stupid these MBAs are. Yes in the next few quarters they will make lots of money. But how many quarters before people will have significantly reduced their downloads?
Also for Yahoo, I hate Ask.com for their trashy approach to getting users. Make a great product and then people might come. Fooling them into coming is just scummy. So now people will lump Yahoo in with the various sites that over the years have tried to use deception as their marketing tool.
For those of you out there all touchy about Java, my comments are not about the Java language, but the java product.
Quite simply my Whois data has only been abused. I have received phony bills from fictitious domain registries. I have received threatening letters from companies that I was violating this or that. And then there is the endless spam. Except that this spam carefully exploits the data found in my whois data.
On the other-hand I don't know of anyone who benefited from whois data beyond curiosity.